I like the pair and the general game plan, but is 26 equipment really the right number? I'm imagining a lot of games will end up with you sitting with an empty board aside from a single creature and a pile of equipment you can't afford to use all at once. You're at 9 creatures, 7 of which are mana dorks. Maybe add some solid defenders to keep more board presence while Gorm and Virtus do their thing? A Axebane Guardian + Overgrown Battlement package would help with both defense and equip costs.
Even if the card is boring there's only ~6 playable bounce spells that you can even consider fielding (it being one of them) and so giving it a D grade is nonsensical. From a purely "I want to win games" perspective it's the third best option overall with the only reasonable competition being Winds of Rebuke.
So I noticed you used to have the Price of Glory/Sacred Ground combo in your deck. Did you ever toy with any other synergies or additions to that? It's my kind of jank but Sacred Ground is just too do-nothing right now. I found Impending Disaster which makes a great donate target with the Ground, and maybe Noyan Dar adds enough synergy that Sacred ground isn't just a dead card. What do you think?
Chance is a bit overpriced but it's attached to another card I'd play anyway. My Edgar build is a bit slower than this one(and runs more Madness) so I frequently get 2-3 Madness casts off of it, while looting away extra lands or whatever I don't need. It's a pretty good performer.
I'm not really trying to go group hug with this deck. It's more of a control deck that allows a bit of extra interacting with my opponents. I mostly play with friends who are very casual Magic players, so bringing a full-on draw-go/stax/prison control deck wouldn't be much fun for anyone. I also wanted to try to avoid the classic playstyle of doing everything at the end of my opponent's turns, hence the combination of big spells and stuff i can use for free/cheap.
Rather than group hug cards, I'm more looking for things that can bring someone who had an awful start or who's getting teamed up on a way back into the game. Try and prevent the games where one player has to wait for a long game to finish because he couldn't draw lands his first 5 turns. But I still want to win in the end, so they should aid my overall game plan. For example, Hunted Phantasm is great at helping one player stall for time, but a 4/6 unlockable doesn't do much for me by itself, it isn't an instant or sorcery, and I can't stop the tokens from just coming back my way because I'm not running Propaganda effects.
As for the other "free" card suggestions you made, Commandeer is a little steep (In mana cost, alternate cost, and monetary cost) for what it does. Often Split Decision will have a comparable effect (I'll either get a copy of a spell i want because the caster won't vote to counter his own spell, or he'll get outvoted in the case of a spell that says "counter this or I win") and it costs 25 cents. Daze and Thwart got chopped because I felt i had enough counters and they were the least appealing of what i had.
This is an attempt to make a Talrand, Sky Summoner deck that doesn't try to win via Mass Polymorph/Palinchron, using High Tide/Extraplanar Lens and other mana doublers to chain cantrips, or by utilizing prison elements such as Overburden. Instead, this deck aims to gently steer the flow of the game by either encouraging attackers to go elsewhere (Reality Shift, Snap, Submerge, Curse of Verbosity, etc.) or trying to play the political game by giving gifts to other players. Dowsing Dagger can help someone with a slow start get some blockers out, Domineering Will can donate blockers to a neighbor, etc. This deck also includes as many cards that involve choices by the whole table as possible. This allows for a lot of political fun and "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" plays ("Give me a 4-1 split on Fact or Fiction and I'll Submerge the Zurgo Helmsmasher coming your way"). The permission and removal are meant to be either cheap or free, usually requiring only a single Island available if any cost reducers are out. This lets me play 5-6 CMC spells on my turn and still have a decent amount of defense/negotiation power. Eventually the deck aims to win by landing a huge finisher or overwhelming with drake tokens. Here's the deck:
This list is meant to be fairly budget. I'm willing to shell out for Academy Ruins, Riptide Laboratory, and Expropriate because they're likely to be staples in my collection and they do so much for this deck. Caged Sun is the only mana doubler I own. Every other card on this list that costs more than ~$8.00 are already in my collection. This is a big reason why I chose not to build around Extraplanar Lens and/or Gauntlet of Power, and why Force of Will and Pact of Negation are missing.
I'm a little medium on Wash Out due to sorcery speed, but it can give a lot of breathing room and is fairly one-sided (This will be the only mono-blue deck in my group). Ensnare seems like another really good option I can use when I'm tapped out but I ran out of space to fit it in. Likewise, Conqueror's Galleon seems like a great late-game mana sink if it can be flipped, but it seems like it'll come online too late to be worth it.
What do you guys think? Cuts, additions, scrap the whole thing?
4x Tinker is another thing most groups won't be ok with. 1x Tinker is too much even. But if you're allowed to play 4, why not include something that'll basically auto-win on turns 2-3, like Blightsteel Colossus? Or something that's just a huge pain to deal with like Nullstone Gargoyle?
Have you considered Eldrazi instead of artifact creatures? Instead of clunky creatures like Phyrexian Colossus which require you to jump through hoops just for them to be effective, you can play U/B Devoid Eldrazi. They're immune to the Plague but give you a much better bang for your buck. Sire of Stagnation, Oblivion Sower, Fathom Feeder, Drowner of Hope, even something like Blight Herder will do you good. But if you want to stick with big artifact creatures, switch to something like Myr Battlesphere that has nothing but upsides.
He means you need 14 (untapped) sources of a color to have a 90% shot at having access to that color on turn 1. I'm pretty sure that doesn't vary per deck (unless you're running Battle of Wits or some other non-60 nonsense) since he's only considering the probability of a source of one color of mana being in your opening hand, first draw, or first mulligan.
You're currently running 0 copies of Gary in your Gary deck. I recommend playing one or more. /s
If you added in the Garys you'd be sitting at 64 cards. Maybe shave the Endless Cockroaches and a couple Reassembling Skeleton? They're pretty mana intensive compared to Nether Traitor. The shadow can also poke in for damage whereas the skellies and cockroaches will just get chumped. The deck may need a little more early action too. Aside from living the dream with the Sol Ring + T2 Smokestack you won't be setting up a lot of Stax elements early on. It's possible you just get run over or people save removal for Braids. Something like Smallpox?
Right now you've got 16 one-drops, which is a lot for a multiplayer format. I'd be especially shy of something like Magus of the Vineyard that over its lifetime will grant a lot more mana to your opponents than it will to you. I'd recommend taking a few of them out and replacing some with 3-mana ramp spells like Overgrowth--which you can easily cast on turn 2 following an Arbor Elf
I can vouch for this deck. It's super straightforward, works pretty much every time, costs almost nothing, and remains decently competitive until you start dealing with combo/Stax on a regular basis.
You should pick one direction or the other with your mana base. Either 4 copies of both Cloudpost and Glimmerpost, or 4 copies of Emeria + 20 Plains (or 16 Plains + 4 Myriad Landscape/Evolving Wilds for Sun Titan/Emeria Shepherd synergy. Both are great, but if you don't have a ton of Plains you won't turn on Emeria, and if you're playing Posts you should play as many as you can.
Mikeaus, the Lunarch is probably just worse than Cathar's Crusade, and could be replaced with more copies of Oketra's Momument. I agree you should run the full 4. Also, if you're running those, you should include Whitemane Lion. You can use him with the Monument to make as many tokens as you have mana at instant speed, and also can flash him in to save a creature in response to removal. I'd cut the Doomed Travelers for them.
What?
Oh great, you made Capsize cry
Chance is a bit overpriced but it's attached to another card I'd play anyway. My Edgar build is a bit slower than this one(and runs more Madness) so I frequently get 2-3 Madness casts off of it, while looting away extra lands or whatever I don't need. It's a pretty good performer.
I'm not really trying to go group hug with this deck. It's more of a control deck that allows a bit of extra interacting with my opponents. I mostly play with friends who are very casual Magic players, so bringing a full-on draw-go/stax/prison control deck wouldn't be much fun for anyone. I also wanted to try to avoid the classic playstyle of doing everything at the end of my opponent's turns, hence the combination of big spells and stuff i can use for free/cheap.
Rather than group hug cards, I'm more looking for things that can bring someone who had an awful start or who's getting teamed up on a way back into the game. Try and prevent the games where one player has to wait for a long game to finish because he couldn't draw lands his first 5 turns. But I still want to win in the end, so they should aid my overall game plan. For example, Hunted Phantasm is great at helping one player stall for time, but a 4/6 unlockable doesn't do much for me by itself, it isn't an instant or sorcery, and I can't stop the tokens from just coming back my way because I'm not running Propaganda effects.
As for the other "free" card suggestions you made, Commandeer is a little steep (In mana cost, alternate cost, and monetary cost) for what it does. Often Split Decision will have a comparable effect (I'll either get a copy of a spell i want because the caster won't vote to counter his own spell, or he'll get outvoted in the case of a spell that says "counter this or I win") and it costs 25 cents. Daze and Thwart got chopped because I felt i had enough counters and they were the least appealing of what i had.
1x Talrand, Sky Summoner
Land
1x Academy Ruins
1x Buried Ruin
1x Field of Ruin
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
29x Island
1x Myriad Landscape
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Riptide Laboratory
1x Soldevi Excavations
Extra Mana/Cost Reduction
1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
1x Caged Sun
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Curious Homunculus
1x Jace's Sanctum
1x Primal Amulet
1x Sapphire Medallion
1x Sky Diamond
1x Sol Ring
Political Cards
1x AEtherize
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
1x Coercive Portal
1x Curse of Verbosity
1x Domineering Will
1x Dowsing Dagger
1x Illusionist's Gambit
1x Intellectual Offering
1x Manifold Insights
1x Plea for Power
1x Reins of Power
1x Split Decision
1x Submerge
1x Wash Out
1x Bident of Thassa
1x Dig Through Time
1x Fabricate
1x Fact or Fiction
1x Frantic Search
1x Hidden Strings
1x Isochron Scepter
1x Kindred Discovery
1x Oona's Grace
1x Opt
1x Ponder
1x Preordain
1x Rhystic Study
1x Tezzeret the Seeker
1x Treasure Cruise
1x Whir of Invention
Permission
1x Capsize
1x Counterspell
1x Curse of the Swine
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Disdainful Stroke
1x Foil
1x Misdirection
1x Muddle the Mixture
1x Negate
1x Pongify
1x Rapid Hybridization
1x Reality Shift
1x Snap
1x Swan Song
1x Blatant Thievery
1x Diluvian Primordial
1x Docent of Perfection
1x Expropriate
1x Metallurgic Summonings
1x Niblis of Frost
1x Rite of Replication
1x Saheeli's Artistry
1x Stolen Identity
Maybeboard:
1x Ensnare
1x Conqueror's Galleon
Some notes on card choices:
This list is meant to be fairly budget. I'm willing to shell out for Academy Ruins, Riptide Laboratory, and Expropriate because they're likely to be staples in my collection and they do so much for this deck. Caged Sun is the only mana doubler I own. Every other card on this list that costs more than ~$8.00 are already in my collection. This is a big reason why I chose not to build around Extraplanar Lens and/or Gauntlet of Power, and why Force of Will and Pact of Negation are missing.
I'm a little medium on Wash Out due to sorcery speed, but it can give a lot of breathing room and is fairly one-sided (This will be the only mono-blue deck in my group). Ensnare seems like another really good option I can use when I'm tapped out but I ran out of space to fit it in. Likewise, Conqueror's Galleon seems like a great late-game mana sink if it can be flipped, but it seems like it'll come online too late to be worth it.
What do you guys think? Cuts, additions, scrap the whole thing?
Have you considered Eldrazi instead of artifact creatures? Instead of clunky creatures like Phyrexian Colossus which require you to jump through hoops just for them to be effective, you can play U/B Devoid Eldrazi. They're immune to the Plague but give you a much better bang for your buck. Sire of Stagnation, Oblivion Sower, Fathom Feeder, Drowner of Hope, even something like Blight Herder will do you good. But if you want to stick with big artifact creatures, switch to something like Myr Battlesphere that has nothing but upsides.
Source: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/casual-multiplayer-formats/multiplayer/683084-building-a-multiplayer-manabase
He means you need 14 (untapped) sources of a color to have a 90% shot at having access to that color on turn 1. I'm pretty sure that doesn't vary per deck (unless you're running Battle of Wits or some other non-60 nonsense) since he's only considering the probability of a source of one color of mana being in your opening hand, first draw, or first mulligan.
If you added in the Garys you'd be sitting at 64 cards. Maybe shave the Endless Cockroaches and a couple Reassembling Skeleton? They're pretty mana intensive compared to Nether Traitor. The shadow can also poke in for damage whereas the skellies and cockroaches will just get chumped. The deck may need a little more early action too. Aside from living the dream with the Sol Ring + T2 Smokestack you won't be setting up a lot of Stax elements early on. It's possible you just get run over or people save removal for Braids. Something like Smallpox?
I can vouch for this deck. It's super straightforward, works pretty much every time, costs almost nothing, and remains decently competitive until you start dealing with combo/Stax on a regular basis.
Mikeaus, the Lunarch is probably just worse than Cathar's Crusade, and could be replaced with more copies of Oketra's Momument. I agree you should run the full 4. Also, if you're running those, you should include Whitemane Lion. You can use him with the Monument to make as many tokens as you have mana at instant speed, and also can flash him in to save a creature in response to removal. I'd cut the Doomed Travelers for them.